Hope entered through the gate that was, by the look of it, a fairly recent addition, and went for the reception stationed in the cottage on the right. A few people were sitting behind a wooden table in front of it, wearing white aprons over their clothes with huge washed-out red crosses , chatting loudly.
Just as an uniformed policeman was about to stop her, clearing his throat to be officially loud, one of the ladies in the funny aprons recognized her, and she was taken to the small trailer behind the reception ,where she was told that her father was stationed.
She entered , knowing all too well that knocking was useless because the sound of him snoring was more than clearly audible, bending the branches of the trees around the caravan with its heavy, weight of the world on the shoulders vibrations.
Her father’s snoring had driven her to tears many times, but not now.
She was missing him, for the few weeks he had spent his free days out here, only coming home to take a shower and put a clean uniform on, Hope never even saw him, most of the time he was gone before she woke up.
She tiptoed inside, left the clothes and the ammo on the small worktop, and decided to stick around until he wakes up.
***
The registration point and the entrance were situated on the top of a slope, and as she sat down to have a coffee offered by the volunteer medical nurse that knew her called Jovana, she herself a heavy built Serbian refugee, one of many people her father had helped in the past who was now returning the favor and helping out., Hope dared to look down towards the rest of the camp for the first time.
Save from a few elder men walking towards the gate, the place seemed spooky empty .
The dead on the inside rarely venture into the light
Hope was introduced to everyone, and wondered how these people she was sitting with could cope with a situation like the one they had at hands here.
They were obviously all old Red Cross volunteers from the time before the wars, when Red Cross was for blood donations and annual first aid exercise, nothing more than that.
They really do desperately need someone like father in charge.
She thought, sipping a proper 'Turkish coffee' while it was still too hot, how it was rebranded into 'Serbian coffee' on the menus in all the restaurants, and asking for coffee by its traditional name could land a person in a lot of trouble.
As if the bloody coffee tasted any different, anyhow.
***
Nurse Jovana suggested she could maybe help with handing out the lunch/dinner meal when Hope asked if there was anything she could do while waiting for her father to wake up.
The two of them passed a row of small, wooden triangular somethings on the left – about a dozen or so, too small to be proper cottages and looking as if they were the roofs of some dwarfish houses that had sunk down into the ground.
Down the path, she saw a big shiny metal container on the right – that was the police 'official' outpost where people registered for documents, which despite the exotic location , had proper working hours and was now closed.
Further down, by the shower and toilets building was where the kitchen tent was set up. A small pick up truck was parked in front of it and the big metal barrels were being unloaded and opened in the makeshift distribution area.
Smells like goulash.
She realized and was reminded by her growling stomach that she had skipped lunch. And breakfast. And how and why that had happened.
And that the mere thought of him twisted her into a whirlpool of desire.
***
A tall, pale boy who looked as if he were twelve years old but ended up in an adult size body, greeted them nervously. Nurse Jovana introduced her as the daughter of her father, and told Amir, the oversized child, to be careful and let Hope help with food distribution.
Careful about what ?
Amir was one of designated helpers in the camp, a group of young Muslim boys who were discharged from the JNA, the once glorious Yugoslav National Army the month before.
Unable to go home, or perhaps equally unwilling – they risked being killed by the Serbs or forced to mobilize by the Muslims, they were stuck in this limbo for now.
These boys, mostly from rural somewhere wheresoever villages had asked her father to allow them to stay in the camp, after several of them were caught and returned swiftly to Bosnia to fight by a representative of Muslim authorities who was there 'helping' the refugees once they crossed the border, usually the Hungarian in the North.
So her dad was an like an officer again, with his own little army to play around.
Finally made it to the general. Heart of Darkness anyone?
Hope smirked as she was given her very own red cross plastered- back- and - front funny apron to put on .
She poured food into plastic oversized cups and felt uneasy how, with the line in front of her table that had formed almost unnoticed growing smaller, no one ever raised their head and looked her in the eyes.
They are all afraid , afraid of anyone and everyone.
They lost everything, and now they are here, begging for mercy distant relatives of the people who made them refugees in the first place.
She felt sick to her stomach and could swear she smelled ash and aftermath of house turned into bonfires in the air.
The lousy meal made with, ironically considerate beef only, was all she could give to make up for her share of guilty conscience.
Her eyes welled up and she was having trouble seeing the greasy siphon she was holding in her hand.
The ice cold voice was howling verses through her mind:
Into the darkness we were taken by force
Into the darkness afraid we arrived
The moon has gone wild above us
The stars have hid themselves from us
Our bones torn apart by the winter
The wind howled at the top of its lungs...
..........our children forgot how to cry, our children are refugees thrown outside...
That was it. These people, their children, all these hundreds of people here deadly silent.
The camp was no louder than a graveyard . Everyone dead. Inside and almost out.
Staring down at her own hands trembling, her tears now lacing every rationed portion with her own need for redemption, Hope understood why there was a heavy smell of fire suffocating her.
Burn a man's home and you might as well have the decency to finish him off and put a bullet through his brain
****
Amir was visibly relieved when there was no one left from the long orderly line that had formed in front of them just a few minutes ago, and Hope informed him that she will leave to see if her father had woken up.
She started to climb up the path towards the gate just as her father stepped out of his trailer.
Like a bear out of his cave.
Her father was in a foul mood usually hours after getting up, his internal clock out of tune for the decades he spent awake almost every other night as the officer in charge, protecting the homeland from enemies within and those lurking outside.
There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, but decided better not to when he pulled her close and gave her his lung-crashing hug. that was his way of saying:
It’s alright. You're safe now.
His eyes were all swollen and the bags under them were dark indigo color. The afternoon nap was probably the first one he has had in days, weeks even.
-So? What do you think?
Dad was making a half-circle with his hand, showing the entire stretched premises of the camp, like perhaps an engineer father showing a beautiful suspension bridge that he designed to his firstborn son would have somewhere, sometime.
Except for the fact that in our family, the firstborn son is an idiot and the daughter gets the speaking parts.
Wow dad nice job being the exact appropriate line.
-It's ….OK. Better than the train station park, I guess. At least you keep them safe before you kick them out .
- Shut up, he barked at her.
- I am doing what I can here. All wars all like this and if you think that these people here are just innocent victims, you go ask them where their men are - shooting at our brothers Serbs in Bosnia right now .
Shooting at her moron of a brother maybe right now.
The stupid son of a bitch had volunteered to go. Hell, they even threw him an obligatory farewell party.
To sign up for the army that was kinda at war. To feel proud to be doing your country a favor when anyone with least bit sanity left over was trying to get out. It took a special kind of upbringing to be that brainwashed.
Having the man in front of her, arguing fiercely what he believed was right, for a father, was probably enough to do the same in the long run.
***
They stood silent for an awkward moment, knowing too well where the conversation was headed and putting reigns on themselves to stop it from going any further .
This was definitely not the right moment for a father-daughter fight on the subject of war. No matter how at odds, the two of them somehow couldn't cope without each other.
- I have to go now, dad, the last bus leaves in half an hour. I left you the two clips mom said to bring on the worktop in the trailer. Anything else you need? I could come over tomorrow....
-No. You stay home. Go to school and take care of your mother. This is no place for a child.
No shit, Sherlock.
- OK,. I’ll go then. Bye, dad.
She was about to start walking away, but changed her mind in an instant and dived for another hug, for a moment loosing her footing in his arms.
***
As she went past the gate, she heard her father calling out:
- Hey! Amir can walk you to the station, make sure you get there safe, right Amir?
Hope turned and before she could shout no, Amir was already running past her father to catch up with her, projecting the same body language of fear that she had noticed about him earlier .
A lost boy with no home to go to without risking being shot, either in the head by his enemies or in the back by his fellow nationals.
No wonder he is scared for his life like that.
Hope tried to figure out what to talk to him about without adding up more pressure to the already intimidating situation.
Five minutes to the station later, and the only response to her river of questions, that she managed to pull out of Amir, was the name of the village he was from.
It sounded awfully familiar, and she was still wondering where she had heard it before as she climbed the bus and gave him a little wave through the dirty window.
Amir waved back, and was gone the moment the driver closed the door and started the engine of the empty bus that would take them back to the civilization..
Or what was left of it in Belgrade, calling her like a prodigal child to come back, scattered across the distant horizon in the dusk.
Just as an uniformed policeman was about to stop her, clearing his throat to be officially loud, one of the ladies in the funny aprons recognized her, and she was taken to the small trailer behind the reception ,where she was told that her father was stationed.
She entered , knowing all too well that knocking was useless because the sound of him snoring was more than clearly audible, bending the branches of the trees around the caravan with its heavy, weight of the world on the shoulders vibrations.
Her father’s snoring had driven her to tears many times, but not now.
She was missing him, for the few weeks he had spent his free days out here, only coming home to take a shower and put a clean uniform on, Hope never even saw him, most of the time he was gone before she woke up.
She tiptoed inside, left the clothes and the ammo on the small worktop, and decided to stick around until he wakes up.
***
The registration point and the entrance were situated on the top of a slope, and as she sat down to have a coffee offered by the volunteer medical nurse that knew her called Jovana, she herself a heavy built Serbian refugee, one of many people her father had helped in the past who was now returning the favor and helping out., Hope dared to look down towards the rest of the camp for the first time.
Save from a few elder men walking towards the gate, the place seemed spooky empty .
The dead on the inside rarely venture into the light
Hope was introduced to everyone, and wondered how these people she was sitting with could cope with a situation like the one they had at hands here.
They were obviously all old Red Cross volunteers from the time before the wars, when Red Cross was for blood donations and annual first aid exercise, nothing more than that.
They really do desperately need someone like father in charge.
She thought, sipping a proper 'Turkish coffee' while it was still too hot, how it was rebranded into 'Serbian coffee' on the menus in all the restaurants, and asking for coffee by its traditional name could land a person in a lot of trouble.
As if the bloody coffee tasted any different, anyhow.
***
Nurse Jovana suggested she could maybe help with handing out the lunch/dinner meal when Hope asked if there was anything she could do while waiting for her father to wake up.
The two of them passed a row of small, wooden triangular somethings on the left – about a dozen or so, too small to be proper cottages and looking as if they were the roofs of some dwarfish houses that had sunk down into the ground.
Down the path, she saw a big shiny metal container on the right – that was the police 'official' outpost where people registered for documents, which despite the exotic location , had proper working hours and was now closed.
Further down, by the shower and toilets building was where the kitchen tent was set up. A small pick up truck was parked in front of it and the big metal barrels were being unloaded and opened in the makeshift distribution area.
Smells like goulash.
She realized and was reminded by her growling stomach that she had skipped lunch. And breakfast. And how and why that had happened.
And that the mere thought of him twisted her into a whirlpool of desire.
***
A tall, pale boy who looked as if he were twelve years old but ended up in an adult size body, greeted them nervously. Nurse Jovana introduced her as the daughter of her father, and told Amir, the oversized child, to be careful and let Hope help with food distribution.
Careful about what ?
Amir was one of designated helpers in the camp, a group of young Muslim boys who were discharged from the JNA, the once glorious Yugoslav National Army the month before.
Unable to go home, or perhaps equally unwilling – they risked being killed by the Serbs or forced to mobilize by the Muslims, they were stuck in this limbo for now.
These boys, mostly from rural somewhere wheresoever villages had asked her father to allow them to stay in the camp, after several of them were caught and returned swiftly to Bosnia to fight by a representative of Muslim authorities who was there 'helping' the refugees once they crossed the border, usually the Hungarian in the North.
So her dad was an like an officer again, with his own little army to play around.
Finally made it to the general. Heart of Darkness anyone?
Hope smirked as she was given her very own red cross plastered- back- and - front funny apron to put on .
She poured food into plastic oversized cups and felt uneasy how, with the line in front of her table that had formed almost unnoticed growing smaller, no one ever raised their head and looked her in the eyes.
They are all afraid , afraid of anyone and everyone.
They lost everything, and now they are here, begging for mercy distant relatives of the people who made them refugees in the first place.
She felt sick to her stomach and could swear she smelled ash and aftermath of house turned into bonfires in the air.
The lousy meal made with, ironically considerate beef only, was all she could give to make up for her share of guilty conscience.
Her eyes welled up and she was having trouble seeing the greasy siphon she was holding in her hand.
The ice cold voice was howling verses through her mind:
Into the darkness we were taken by force
Into the darkness afraid we arrived
The moon has gone wild above us
The stars have hid themselves from us
Our bones torn apart by the winter
The wind howled at the top of its lungs...
..........our children forgot how to cry, our children are refugees thrown outside...
That was it. These people, their children, all these hundreds of people here deadly silent.
The camp was no louder than a graveyard . Everyone dead. Inside and almost out.
Staring down at her own hands trembling, her tears now lacing every rationed portion with her own need for redemption, Hope understood why there was a heavy smell of fire suffocating her.
Burn a man's home and you might as well have the decency to finish him off and put a bullet through his brain
****
Amir was visibly relieved when there was no one left from the long orderly line that had formed in front of them just a few minutes ago, and Hope informed him that she will leave to see if her father had woken up.
She started to climb up the path towards the gate just as her father stepped out of his trailer.
Like a bear out of his cave.
Her father was in a foul mood usually hours after getting up, his internal clock out of tune for the decades he spent awake almost every other night as the officer in charge, protecting the homeland from enemies within and those lurking outside.
There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, but decided better not to when he pulled her close and gave her his lung-crashing hug. that was his way of saying:
It’s alright. You're safe now.
His eyes were all swollen and the bags under them were dark indigo color. The afternoon nap was probably the first one he has had in days, weeks even.
-So? What do you think?
Dad was making a half-circle with his hand, showing the entire stretched premises of the camp, like perhaps an engineer father showing a beautiful suspension bridge that he designed to his firstborn son would have somewhere, sometime.
Except for the fact that in our family, the firstborn son is an idiot and the daughter gets the speaking parts.
Wow dad nice job being the exact appropriate line.
-It's ….OK. Better than the train station park, I guess. At least you keep them safe before you kick them out .
- Shut up, he barked at her.
- I am doing what I can here. All wars all like this and if you think that these people here are just innocent victims, you go ask them where their men are - shooting at our brothers Serbs in Bosnia right now .
Shooting at her moron of a brother maybe right now.
The stupid son of a bitch had volunteered to go. Hell, they even threw him an obligatory farewell party.
To sign up for the army that was kinda at war. To feel proud to be doing your country a favor when anyone with least bit sanity left over was trying to get out. It took a special kind of upbringing to be that brainwashed.
Having the man in front of her, arguing fiercely what he believed was right, for a father, was probably enough to do the same in the long run.
***
They stood silent for an awkward moment, knowing too well where the conversation was headed and putting reigns on themselves to stop it from going any further .
This was definitely not the right moment for a father-daughter fight on the subject of war. No matter how at odds, the two of them somehow couldn't cope without each other.
- I have to go now, dad, the last bus leaves in half an hour. I left you the two clips mom said to bring on the worktop in the trailer. Anything else you need? I could come over tomorrow....
-No. You stay home. Go to school and take care of your mother. This is no place for a child.
No shit, Sherlock.
- OK,. I’ll go then. Bye, dad.
She was about to start walking away, but changed her mind in an instant and dived for another hug, for a moment loosing her footing in his arms.
***
As she went past the gate, she heard her father calling out:
- Hey! Amir can walk you to the station, make sure you get there safe, right Amir?
Hope turned and before she could shout no, Amir was already running past her father to catch up with her, projecting the same body language of fear that she had noticed about him earlier .
A lost boy with no home to go to without risking being shot, either in the head by his enemies or in the back by his fellow nationals.
No wonder he is scared for his life like that.
Hope tried to figure out what to talk to him about without adding up more pressure to the already intimidating situation.
Five minutes to the station later, and the only response to her river of questions, that she managed to pull out of Amir, was the name of the village he was from.
It sounded awfully familiar, and she was still wondering where she had heard it before as she climbed the bus and gave him a little wave through the dirty window.
Amir waved back, and was gone the moment the driver closed the door and started the engine of the empty bus that would take them back to the civilization..
Or what was left of it in Belgrade, calling her like a prodigal child to come back, scattered across the distant horizon in the dusk.
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